Only five of the six books are reviewed here.
18-22/7/22
PR: A guy that got lucky and was born with a brain specially well wired to play super VR games gets by in his life by selling/teaching magic skills he invented in the game. So, if having your favorite game turned into a nine to five office job wasn't bad enough, while he's busy handling some guild red tape some other dude walks in and burns a sport-car valued scroll (real life money) to permanently turn MC into a goblin hoping that since NPCs have different settings as players that made his character unplayable. Except for all the "wired differently" thing envy guy didn't account for, and while MC did lost a level three hundred character and all his equips, he gets this cool twelve-to-one time dilatation thing that's worth the cost, really. He messes around with other goblins in the zone, gets K'd a few times until he manages to pull a plot voucher sacrificial, insta-killing dagger and gets the magic sub-boss of the cave off his back. That earns him a promotion and that's where the fun begins. Wish killing your boss made you the boss IRL, sad.
After getting a bunch of matrix-like flashing lines of random code, MC gets the boss juju and decuples his resource pools among other OP stuff, that surprisingly enough the author manages to put the character in such position that his overpowerness doesn't really feels like it. After meeting a VI pal that's not only really convenient to have around but also key to the plot, MC realizes that he's unable to log out, which means that while really, really slowly he will die. He's a bit of a drama queen and says that "his body will not be able to endure more than two days of malnourishment", and gets really panicky which makes him sign a bunch of bullshit legal documents relieving the game company for his situation and possible demise in exchange for a better game pod and ten thousand dollars. The lawyer on behalf of the company that meets him in the game makes a lot of dumb points that even taking into account the possible peril MC's at, it's a little baffling how he perceives himself being put in a corner with arguments so weak. Like "you were warned that there would be dangers as to play goblin" like, dude. First, I'm a goblin because your shit company can't keep tabs on their own shitty game, and because you're so greedy that you won't close the servers for an hour to get rid of the scrolls, and second I was "warned" by a friend, not your company, that I might get headaches and night terrors, not that I could friggin' die. Or the "You cost the company a lot in CPU power to generate this part of the map" like Ohhh, sorry. Is my LIFE not worth your computing power? "We would need to have a team of technicians twenty-four seven to get you out, and that would cost us a lot" Sure, go tell that to the jury, sure they'll want me to pay a fine! Well, as I said. Let's just be lenient with the character because he was panicking, but really wtf man. But the important part, plot wise, is that he might get out if he reaches boss tier four, which along the stipend the company pays him to disown any legal bindings basically means his life hasn't changed. Before, he had no life and both playing and working was the same thing, and now it's basically the same but goblins. The character faces different challenges for the rest of the volume including a dark god with the very creative name of "Nihilator" and a hobgoblin boss that tortures him for a couple of days.
The book is pretty decent, above average for this niche genre, and while the whole time-dilation feels cheaty it's still better than your usual time travel trope. The real world/game world thing is a bit immersion breaking, but tolerable, and the tag stays true having the book in fact a lot of base-building components. 6/10
(edit 11/24 I would like to point out that the "base building" throughout the story is basically the MC just telling the one builder guy to make QOL things like a mess hall or houses or resource collecting stuff like lumberjack stations while the plot is driven by the one building he didn't nor could have build, the Breeder's Den. At no point does he makes any fortification nor smart alocation of buildings)
22-25/7/24 Life Reset "EvP" Environment vs. Player (AKA, Life reset 2; ogres from hell vs greedy level 300 players)
PR: After kickin' ass in Hobgoblin town, MC goes goblin mode and takes on bigger, better targets including a haunted castle full of demons and undead, which in theory sounded awesome but in practice it was more like a mechanical cleansing, going pool of demons after pool, with few ogre undead in-between that were too scarce in number to pose a threat to the monstrous demon hunters. After getting a few racial comments from near-dead prisoners (never heard of racial conflicts between dwarves and goblins), proving that discrimination beats desperation, the "players" decide that the morally good call is to save them, which is a little strange from my POV, if I'm killing the demons that kept you captive until starvation anything short of devotion is offensive. Deeper in the nest the acquired dwarven priest proves his worth when his timely, non-consensual sacrifice gets MC out of the becoming-too-common plight of a ridiculously high level adversary trying to kill him. But don't fret too much, because he resurrects immediately as an aberration, priest of darkness, which is about as edgy as you can imagine. Then, MC finds out that Big bad guild sent forces after him and we get that typical RPGlit training cutscenes that last about a third of the book, mostly in MC summoning troops including ogres from hell (disappointingly weak for their name) rounding them up and hunting oversized, plated bulls, him enchanting a bunch of shit and upgrading the settlement to get more shit to enchant. After a few scenes of a very annoying spy/terrorist stirring the pot and blowing stuff up, the big bads enter the scene and all hell breaks loose. Ogre hell, that is. The battle has several shifts but the author points that individually, save for bosses, players are worth about twice the mobs, so being outnumbered two-to-one results in MC barely hanging on and miraculously winning by a hair's breadth due some timely "eternal night" upgrades that spawn momos. Speaking of which, the MC is always whining about being on the low-odds but has this mega OP attack that reminds me a lot of "Failure Frame", with which he paralyze ("freezes") the enemy and "sacrifices" him, insta-killing enemies up to his "dark mana" skill, which means every single player that attacked the settlement, not to mention that he has teleport abilities and the eternal night thing has super dark shadows cast twenty-four-seven, which all means he could've just kite all eighty players without having to spend a single soldier. Not only does he not do this, but he fails to use the ability in direct combat, he freezes an archer and instead of sacrificing him, he throws some low-damage spell towards the bulk of the enemy's force. He claims that's too mana-consuming, but it only costs him 100 MP, and he has 2000 something-ish, not to mention each time he k's someone with that technique some magic crystal that's basically a MP healing potion drops, meaning he Para-Sacrifices some lvl 30 player for 100 MP and gets a pot worth 300MP if not more, instead he chooses to do things like casting mana shield that drains 1MP per blocked DMG, and with each strike dealing between 40 to 100 damage each, unless assuming he manages to kill the enemy before landing more than two hits which almost never happens, he ends up spending more MP than if he had gone for the ParaCrifice cheat skill. Sometimes the author objects that the skill "didn't take" but refuses to elaborate. Furthermore, the MC fails to use his home turf advantage, so instead of using the tunnel choke point in their favor he sends his forces onto the open field like a dork. He also forgot to set any type of trap or defensive mechanism outside of the eternal night blessing that wasn't his idea to begin with. After pulling a few stunts and getting miracle-saved by the once again, suspiciously timely appearance of the friendly players, he almost manages to win until the high-levels do the "Oh, I'm losing so I quit" and teleport out just like other of the like has done before, issue MC also failed to address. At least this time he realizes he screwed up but not before they throw some conveniently ping-pong sized magic teleport anchor that instantly creates the formation without any assistance. Guess MC is not the only one pulling stunts. Speaking of which, he pulls yet another one and "overloads" the formation, closing the portal, but not before Big Bad Idiot comes forth. He does the usual evil guy monologue while getting pummeled just to look cool, then he uses another magic thing to lock MC in place before threatening him into slave working for him since the document-filled horizon wasn't quite what he envisioned while aiming for guild leader. MC refuses and pulls some mega stunt, piercing the locking magic and hitting the idiot square in the chest, dealing fifteen times the maximum damage he had ever made. Granted, this wouldn't have been possible if the bad guy wasn't rubbing against the magic ward like a stripper against the pole. Well, he dies and MC resurrects everyone, and everything more or less comes to normal plus some of the upgrades acquired along the way. Epilogue: The big bad spends his entire brain juice stock to come up with the Sun Tzu worthy strategy to finally defeat this overwhelming lvl 40 goblin: send more guys. The second in charge tries to object but Big Bad insists.
This volume was better than the first, but still has ways to go. Firstly, the existence of such an OP technique as the ParalaCrifice upsets the balance of the entire book, and makes all other techniques seem entirely lackluster, which means that the author should either abandon it or completely embrace it, but certainly get out of this in-between thing. The goblin persona is still quite crude and feels forcefully unhuman, which also brings the question of whether the author wans us to treat his world as a real one or as a game one, due conflicting traits such players rolling in, some things not being important due being a game but others have consequence due not being a game, all very confusing. In my opinion, the addition of monster players other than the MC substract credibility and the conflict that he has to maintain his so called humanity is completely absurd, the only reason for the author reminding us that MC is human is to have a clear, definite goal for the novel at the cost of not making sense. The novel's inability to present challenges at the MC outside of some rare material or some ridiculously high-leveled enemy is also becoming tiring. The notion of a lvl 40 goblin's hasty charged attack obliterating a level 310, fully geared player, even if the latter is at half health is simply preposterous. With Barka I could understand: the level difference was barely ten and the attack was charged for almost an entire day fueled by torture, with the demoness it struck me as weird since her failing to prevent some lowly goblin destroying her nexus to hell speaks of not slow reaction time, of entirely null reaction time. When you see a bunch of people tampering with your only weakness you tend to address the problem sharply and swiftly, but whatever. Now this? The guy owns a friggin' guild with hundreds of recruits, each and every one of them able to destroy Goblin's gorge entirely on their own, yet he not only forfaits the advantage of surprise by feeding MC a bunch of lowlies to "soften him up" while being completely aware that "softening" an enemy with the capacity of resurrecting his entire army while his foddler takes months to arrive is pitting your greatest weakness against your enemy's greatest strength, he also fails to properly use the spy that literally fell on his lap telling him to "weaken" the goblins instead of telling her to, oh I don't know, desecrate the cemetery? That would've put MC against the cords, he would've forfeit himself, not only that he also fails to use the portal thing, that he could've used in a much more secure location gaining a foothold at few dozen meters from the base of the guy that should he fail to kill will utterly destroy his reputation and thus his ability to land a proper hit. Then, when he finally has his enemy at his mercy, not due to merit may I add but simply overwhelming force, instead of capturing him outright he starts to gloat and show off like a fucking tard, when a truckload of "coincidences" strike him. He just "happens" to have used a very specific ring that "happens" to corrode the immortality-granting arena building, and he just "happen" to suddenly and with no reason decide to tank every hit going in his direction which "coincidentally" brings him at fifty percent HP, just the requirement for the "conveniently" discovered ability of the staff to trigger, he then just "happens" to change his mind about drinking an HP pot when I know for a fact that if players have 999/1000 bullets they press "r", allegedly due him "suddenly recalling" that the arcs of the top guild in NEO can't affort to spend a meagre potion, then he just "happens to decide" rub himself against the magic ward like a horny otaku against his waifu body pillow, ward that the MC has just the right item that he "thankfully" adquired at the beggining of the volume to pierce, and as it appears "luck" was on his side when some glorified pointy stick pierces not only the lvl 100 ward but also the lvl 310 armor, and discharges the spell he "luckily discovered" half a page ago which just "happens" to deal exactly the amout of damage required to kill the Big Bad, instatly, despite all his lvl 310 magic resistance trinkets. Well, despite the less-than-compelling finale, the volume was rather engaging through-out and balances action with kingdom building quite well. 7/10
25/7/24-27/7/24 Life Reset #3 Hobnobbing (Goblin to the Arena plus let the hammer fall)
PR: After the less than thrilling ending of the last volume, this one starts very humbly in a hobgoblin city that reminded me a lot of Oblivion's Imperial City (bcs Layout) but could also be reminiscent of Attack on Titan and other multi-walled cities with very rigid social-economic structures. Until half the book give or take we take a stroll with MC in what he calls "the typical starting city" and see all sorts of basic cliché mission, gain reputation here fetch that uncover that other thing and of course the arena fights that are that classic weak-to-strong fights we're so used to. I can't say it was particularly interesting nor did I felt any type of commiseration regarding the slave goblins, and I think that MC feeling it is super hypocritical of him. He goes full Martin Luther King Jr. about how the Goblin slave has been crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination, few days after literally commanding FIFTY goblins to act as suicide bombers to gain few slivers of damage on the invaders. Anyways, he beats one of the arena champions but THE CHAMPION (full caps) is beyond his capability to defeat, which later on puts a lot of pressure on him when after accomplishing his mission of acquiring an illegal trade route and assassinating a high leveled shaman that opposed him he has to steamroll his way out the city with the aid of a mega-golem he managed to manufacturate. He escapes and after rallying his minions and few preparatives launches a full-scale counter-attack on the Big Bad Guild, with the goal of sullying their reputation enough to frustrate future attacks. The goal is mostly accomplished thanks to the level 310 exploit/cheat-like golem whom I reckon won't be making other apparences in the novel later on due how broken it is, but ultimately fail since the MC didn't account the possibility of being captured. Fortunately, or unfortunatly, he listens to Vic, his companion, and kills a non-assuming bird familiar, triggering the apocalipsis. The world crumbles and Shiva, who is a male entity by the way, takes over NEO, putting an end to this arc (according to the author).
I'll be plain, the start of the volume is sub-par to the rest of the novel, pretty unimaginative and dull, but the second half manages to lift the entire thing by the bootstraps and gets us a very satisfying end and a promise of radical changes, that TBH were in order due plot development. 8/10
30/7/24 Life Reset #4 Human Resource (Operation Monster: rescue players from the evil human clutches)
PR: Having regained his sanity after going to therapy for two weeks, MC is ready to jump back to the game and as the sociopathic lawer who could defend BTK in a court of law with a straight face says "save the poor players that are stuck, unable to log out". Once in, he finds that after being gone for a year his clan has been practically overrun by Kobolds, but after a few philophical disscutions about whether there's a goblin in him or if he IS the goblin he manages to get his mega-boss mojo and whitout too much hindrance steamrolls his way into "Koboltopia", claiming the "settlement" and finding out that after a year of passive income he's accrued a shit-ton of resources that'll come in real handy in the super-fast expansion his army. Later on he finds out that this astronomically large amounts of resources aren't actually that large and that he'll need a helluva lot more after expending them all in, like... Two weeks? Players who dig Idlers get the feeling. Skipping a loooot of bad "puns" and "jokes" about balls, sci-fi in fantasy settings, bad songwritting, the implications of feeling emotionally attached to the daughter you concieved in the game and other whatnots, MC manages to get a large enough army to conquer a small frontier city-fortress, to which efforts rather than using actual sidge tactics or infitration/spionage work he uses the game exploit of resurrectable monsters to brute force through all fortifications in what can be described as an endless stream of mid-level combatants flowing from a hastly-put-together war camp. Personally, I don't blame either side for the results since they were both equally terrible at using tactics to reduce cost and casualties, guess that with resurrectable forces certain conciderations cease to matter. In particular, I'd point out how the defendors failed to use their forfied city that looks a lot like what MC should've build back at his main camp when he feared player invasion, and instead went to the open field to meet the attackers. In the end, while MC did won the battle for the city, the biggest winner was evil dwarf #1 aka Ragnar, who's a priest of light and thus evil by nature, since he found an exploit of his own and did some sort of suicide bomb tactic netting several levels for each respawn, effectively escaping capture and powerleveling all the way to level forty. In my opinion, having Ragnar pull such an obvious cheat proves that Shiva is not all that fair, especially concidering that MC had to defeat thousands and thousands of monsters, many of which were several times his own level though a span of several months just to reach level fourty, whereas Ragnar just had to suicide bomb against foes half his level for a couple of days to achieve the same result. Ragnar does not seem very preocupied by the powers of darkness as it appears since he apostate on the Godess of Light whose powers prevented his capture. On a side note, as I had effectively foresaw, the author put a cap to the golem character.
The volume feels a lot like a build-up due most of it being MC getting the fundations for a big army and the motivation to march forward, only at the very end seeing some worthy action. The volume did not live up to the expectitions setted by the apocaliptic scenario, and the new rules of the game are mostly a let-down. In particular I resent the forced scientific aspect where players do research and are rewarded in the game for their discoveries and while I understand the importance plotwise, I firmly believe the author could've found a way that did not involve putting a computer-filled, high-tech facility with labcoat wearing players in the middle of a medieval europe town. The army build is well within expectations and did not surprise me a bit, while the record-bad jokes made by the VIs stuck a dagger in the back of the immersive efforts. Runecraft, levels, adventures and pretty much everything good that the book had going on is left aside and replaced by progressively swelling the army's numbers, while the occational apperence of outrider, godlike VIs make the whole thing seem pointless. If you're going to be attacked by Godly VIs at every turn of the corner, why not just make a level 3000 golem and get done with it? Is what the readers think. The "fate child" character completly occlude MC and it's pretty annoying to me that the pull-out-of-his-you-know-where card of "if fate-child gets as much as scratched by the enemy, you insta-die" when all the other vows had for punishment stuff like "Nihilator's wrath" or permanet debuffs. This, along with the outrider stuff, makes me as a reader really question whether whatever the MC builds has any point. As I said, the next volume MIGHT be better since all the foundation stuff is out of the way, but having a thousand-pages book as interludium is a bit too much, IMO. Also, the constant references to tactics while employing practically none other than flanking and circling makes me itch for REAL strategies. Clearly the worse book of the series so far. 5/10
30-1/8/24 Life Reset #5 Conquest (Life Reset: The Empire Strikes Back)
PR: After couple hundred pages of the MC killing lava scorpions that I suppose the author just felt like needing to put in there as to still maintain the RPGlit label with some old-fashion mob killing and looting (though as I pointed out in the previous volume the repertoire of MC's combat skills is rather narrow, so killing a hundred lava scorpions was more like a chore to get the farming out the way), he finds himself in a much more interesting peril: A legion of the enemie's forces march towards some recently adquired hamblet, force that outnumbers his own aproximatly six to one, so instead of retreating to the fortified city he conquered in the last volume a shy few day's march back and preparing for a sidge while orchestating for reinforcements to flow from a near-by location, possibly using his now trademark tactic of resurrecting his troops, he pulls the most controversial war tactic that ever existed: while just under three days before the attack, he travels to another highly fortified enemy city in an attempt to assassinate the command-rung and pray to pull a stunt good enough as to avoid the ire of the mayor's hundred-twenty leveled, tier-four boss bodyguard, all this before the attack so as to absorb the settlement and all its forces and set a defense at the hamblet. Fortunately, rather than thanks to skill, Lucky Bastard MC does a lot of juggling and convinces the Arena Master to set him, a wanted fugitive, in a three-staged scaled battle against The Champion (he first has to defeat some elite, then the magic branch subchampion, then the champion) so as to pick the interest of all his targets and strike them all at once, which of course sounds a lot better if we ignore that it will also pick the interest of all the city's elites and most the soldiers', so basically MC, should he succeed, will find himself in the arena against a foe he cannot beat while his eight low-level assassins have to spread out and deal with four different escorted targets which is extra hard taking into account that four of them need to strike at once to deal enough damage and bring down ONE target, and that's even without taking the mega bodyguard into account. The plan goes better than planed, luckily for the MC, and he effectively carries successive takedowns on the targets using mambo jambo to both assist his assassins (some assassins, eh?) and avoid everyone from noticing the explosions and yells. Even with all the assist, two of the assassins die. With assassins like that who needs an army, right? And he even manages to pull even more luck out his hat when he manages to ParalaCrifice the mayor just in time before Guard guy kills his daughter (and thus him) by death-teleporting past the magic wards, and even though the mayor had some mambo jambo of his own and transfered all sustained damage to the guard. Lucky Sacrifice worked, eh? With his newly assimilated forces he marches onward to the main battle of the volume, but not before a round of bad jokes and some golem making. There's a boo-hoo scene about the assassins being sacrificed to Nihilator, but honestly I think those incompetents had it coming. The main battle mostly gets carried by the stolen heavy-hitters, Guard and Champion, and the MC who teleports around the battlefield a lot, dissables the sidge weapons and sets five magic portals behind the enemies. A demotion is on the call for the bastard "master strategist" who didn't foresaw the enemy bringing siege weapons to a siege, probably the same guy that suggested holding the line on a flimsy wood hamblet rather than in the FUCKING FORTESS, you know the one with tall stone walls, merlons and arrowslits? With advisors like that, who need's enemies?? The dwarf guy, who's unnecessarily rude BTW, had some revelation moment when he predicted that the enemy they heavily outnumbered would try to flank them, I don't know if he's a genious that saw the "master strategist" idiocy or he's the idiot and thinks flanking is like the only war tactic that ever existed. Fortunately for the MC, he's mojo is quite enough to deal with the hiccups produced by useless employees, and his assambled forces plus eternal night blessing rank two is enough to win the battle. According to my calculations, given that he was against six thousand soldiers and in the second volume the author says that Eternal Night blessing sacrifices all defeated foes within its reach, and given that those soldiers average level 35, at one Faith Point for soldier level (though it should be more), by the end of the battle MC should have 210.000 FP and enough Void Cristals to enchant his entire armory, which would be totally broken so I suppose the author is going to conveniently forget that part of the blessing. He also captures Ragnar, which we knew he would because author setted the whole thing by having Rag relinquish his main advantage over MC namely being a priest of light, but what we didn't know is that the guy pulled a full hippie move and "forgeve him" in a scene that goes as follows: (I follow the moskva...) "Ragnar, I know you attacked my clan since the first time I saw you, that you systematically killed copious amonts of soldiers and even permanently burned the soul of a high-level general, whom I supposedly deem a friend, " (Down to Gorky park...) "I know that you almost killed my daughter after threatening to rape her and her mother, that you dubbed yourself "goblin slayer" and went on a crusade against me and all I represent" (Listening to the winds...) "But I forgive you, brother. You're one of us, and I welcome you into my ranks, where you will be perfectly positioned to destroy everything I build and hold dear." (of chaaange.) "Oh, Oren... I, Ragnar, fully pledge to your clan, because it was my plan all along" (and did you ever think, ) "I became an apostathe so that you could more effectivly capture me, and make me yours. Sorry about what I said, I'm just a jealous guy" (That we could be so close...) "Now that you forcefully turned me into a ant-like monster, stripping me all I had accomplished over the past year, I can tell you the truth. All those gay 'jokes', yeah. They weren't jokes" (like broooothersss). After the Yaoi moment, Ragnar becomes an important member of the GreenPiece clan and goes conquering a few more minor settlements with minor, uninpired battles. Well, just one battle actually since looks like Nihilator got bored with all the BS and decided to Annihilate one of the target settlements while the two love birds did their thing. Fortunately for the MC because his "plan" of "sneaking into the town, assassinate the leader and take over the settlement" was less than thorough. The volume ends with some MC secretly setting foot into Evanecense, foreshadowing another of his so called "tactics" to take it over. 6/10
